US electrolyser maker raises $18mn for AEM tech

US-based electrolyser start-up Power to Hydrogen (P2H2) has raised $18mn to scale up the size of its stack technology and strengthen the company's equipment production capacity.

The firm will soon deploy two 250kW anion exchange membrane (AEM) stacks, the largest installed globally, nearly 100 times larger than the 2.4kW stacks offered by German rival Enapter, P2H2 vice president of business development Alex Zorniger told Argus.

P2H2 will deliver the stacks for a 500kW pilot at the Port of Antwerp around the turn of the year, as the project has already reached an investment decision, he added.

Enapter mass produces its 2.4kW "cores" or stacks to assemble into larger arrays, and has already delivered projects at megawatt scale, in terms of total capacity. But P2H2 has developed the largest individual AEM stack size, as it aims to get closer to stack sizes of the more established alkaline and proton exchange membrane (PEM) technologies, Zorniger said.

According to Zorniger, P2H2 has also made a breakthrough in durability compared with some other firms in the race to develop AEM technology, which has been tipped to lower renewable hydrogen production costs in future. The P2H2 stacks have shown durability five times better than the EU's current performance indicators for "state of the art" AEM stacks, he said, albeit only in tests of 10kW.

P2H2's stacks operate at a higher pressure of 250 bar compared with some electrolyser rivals, which means customers can skip the cost of compressing the hydrogen which is necessary for hydrogen storage or certain applications like mobility or production of ammonia or methanol.

The new 250kW stacks are a big step up from the two 10kW stacks that P2H2 has deployed at projects in the US — one with Italy's Enel Green Power and another with a consortium of international electric utilities including American Electric Power, Portugal's EDP, Germany's E.ON and ESB. Those four joined the investment round this week.

The funding round was led by investment firm Rev1 Ventures and joined by the Ohio-based consumer appliances manufacturer Worthington Enterprises. They were also joined by investment firms Finindus, FH Capital, INP Capital, Japanese power company Jera, and Japanese industrial corporation Asahi Kasei which could be looking to build on its own plans to sell alkaline electrolysers.

Ohio-based P2H2 has branched out across the Atlantic with the Antwerp pilot plant and office in Belgium as many of its backers are European firms with plans to supply kit for European projects, Zorniger said.

P2H2 expects to announce its first commercial client projects in 2025. Once it has validated its technology in Antwerp, P2H2 could make tens of megawatts of electrolyser equipment annually at its non-automated site in Ohio and will make use of some of the $18mn to strengthen its supply chains. But it will probably need to move to a new automated factory to scale up further, Zorniger said.

By Aidan Lea